We survive. The hard way, the easy way, it doesn't matter. Sometimes the only way. The ways that teach us lessons so we can survive again and again, each time. We survive. And we learn.
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The monument is not the only one of its kind, as many planets across the galaxy were touched by the Time Wars. Some are dedicated to one side or the other and some claim to be neutral. This one's certainly not the biggest, or the most important one. It's on a little backwater planet that, at one point, was a stronghold of the Time Lords. It wasn't the first to fall, nor the last, but somewhere at the beginning of the end.
His coat fluttering in the breeze, the Doctor stands alone, staring at the column of gray, unadorned stone, with the simple inscription "In memory". No more is needed. Anyone who would come here would know exactly what had happened, or wouldn't care.
He speaks, and does not know why. Stupid to talk to ghosts of memories, he knows. And yet, he speaks. "I'm sorry I didn't come here sooner."
"We have a son. A year old now."
He turns away in frustration, running a hand through his hair. It's not as if they can hear him. He kicks at a stone, and watches it as it goes bouncing away along the empty plain, devoid of life. Calming, he turns back around, staring at the dirt beneath his dusty Converse.
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"I don't know what to do, Rose." It's a confession that's hard to make. With this soft body against his chest, and the baby's face, looking very much indeed like a miniature Winston Churchill, but endearing despite all reason, it's the truest thing he can say.
She snorts indelicately, rolls her eyes at him. "You think I do?"
He smiles, but only briefly. When he opens his mouth to continue, she cuts him off, knowing that this is about more than which way up to hold the child. "We'll manage. We always have."
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He leaves the singing of lullabies to Rose. Instead, when Rose makes him go in her place to calm the boy down, the Doctor reads aloud. Anything from children's books to temporal physics, to "the Year's Best Science-Fiction from 1967", all pulled at random from the TARDIS library.
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"I'd like to get away from Earth for a while
And then comes back to it and begin again.
May no fate willfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return. Earth's the right place for love
I'd don't know where it's likely to go better."
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He stops, closes the book, smiling down at the crib, contemplating this strange life he's found himself in, watching the boy, sleeping and dreaming of birches he's never seen.
Rose watches them, and then it comes to her, out of some half forgotten memory from so many lifetimes ago. "One could do worse than be a swinger of birches," she says, smiling as he whips around, caught, smiling his puckish grin.
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It's not about the street you grew up on. Or rather, it is, but not the things like the cross street or how far away something else is. It's the little, insignificant things, the doorstep you sat on after school, the people you ran with in your childhood gang, the way the street smelled after a good hard rain, the way the branches bent as they swung down. The things that are hardest to learn.
The little things make us what we were. And what we substitute when we do not have those things
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"I'm scared."
"I'm scared I'm going to lose her. I'm scared of what would happen to me."
"I don't think I could stand to lose her."
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For the first few years, just because it's practical and it's worked so far. They spend a few years in the suns of Cairo, until Alex is as brown as the other children he grows up with. A few years later, and they move on. Always moving on, always finding a new place to be.
Andrecia, 5975; Venice, 1923; Portland, Oregon, 1957; Each place, only a few years, and back and forth in time now. Simply because they can. For the sheer joy of it.
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"I'm scare I might lose him too. And that might be even worse. Flesh of my flesh, bone of my bone. A descendent. A son. Something so precious. How I can bear it? How can I bear the weight of knowing that I cannot always protect him? That to put him in a glass case where no harm would come to him would be just as bad.
"Ironically enough, I learned that from you, didn't I?
"Stay long enough, and you begin to smother yourselves to death.
"I'm not going to be like you.
"I have a son."
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Rose watches him from the doorway, the TARDIS make reassuring humming noises behind her back. She doesn't know whether it's for her sake, or for the child strapped in his cloth to her back, or for the one who can't hear it from where he is, so far out.
Finally curiosity, one of those crazy human impulses that will always get the better of her, cannot be sated, and she strikes out across the dusty, windswept plain towards the still figure standing alone.
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"I love her."
"I love them both.
"And maybe that's dangerous, and maybe that's against some kind of law.
"I don't care anymore."
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This isn't what it should be, and it isn't what it's supposed to be, and that's never mattered. You fumble along, doing the best that you can. Some days you feel elated, perhaps happier than you've ever been before. Other days, the little annoyances and struggles of life, every one of the myriad lives you live, catch up to you and overwhelm you so.
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Rose is twice as angry as he is, probably. If she was any less of what she is, she be shaking and screaming and pleading. But, as the Doctor bargains between her life, and Alex's and the planets, she's keeping her face so still, so perfect. As if her and her son being held hostage for the ransom of a galaxy is nothing to her.
"Come now, Doctor. Such a pretty little thing. And so very young. Surely she's worth something to you."
He won't respond, doesn't trust himself really. Besides, this is not the proper time to speak.
"Or perhaps," the man-shaped creature says with a nasty grin, "they're a nuisance you'd rather be rid of?"
It takes all he's made of not to shudder at that. He doesn't look at the terror in Rose's eyes that he taught her to conceal on her face. He doesn't think he could manage that.
His brain moves and the hasty plan is carried out and, as the explosions die away, Rose clings to the baby and cries, big shivering heaves. He simply holds her.
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"Is it worth it?"
She looks up from the mug of tea and the crossword puzzle. "What?"
"I keep thinking, that maybe," he stops, can't go on, because he knows where this argument, that's exactly what it is, goes. Where it's gone every time.
Rose sets down the pencil very carefully. "Maybe what?" He's started this, she isn't going to let him stop.
He sighs, goes on, not really wanting to. "That maybe it'd be better if you and Alex were somewhere…safer."
"Doctor," she begins, ready to start in on all of the reasons why and why not, the examples of how he's tried it before. He stops her.
"You nearly died today. Both of you."
She tilts her head studying him. "You think I don't know that? You think I'm not scared of what could happen next? I could lose him at any moment. Any moment. And not to things like monsters and plots, but to everyday life. You think that doesn't scare me too?"
"But wouldn't it be better where you didn't have to deal with people trying to kill you everyday?" He asks, pleading his case.
"Do you think they'd leave us alone? 'Oh, that Rose Tyler's stopped traveling with the Doctor, she's of no further use to us'? You don't think they wouldn't hesitate to fly across the galaxy just to use me as a threat against you?"
He doesn't answer, looking down. Rose picks the pencil back up and moves on to the next crossword clue. "It's worth it," she tells him simply.
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You can't lock someone away, just because you want to keep them safe. You'll only end up killing them anyway. Not that it doesn't hurt, watching them go and live, knowing that one day they won't. That something will happen, because something always happens, that's just their life.
That one day all of this will end and the universe will die out or fade away. Entropy runs, and you can't stop it, even for a moment. That's what makes the living of it, even living for so long a time, so painful.
And so, so beautiful.
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"No, that's not precisely true, really."
"Because I have a reason for wanting the universe to be better than it is now."
"A reason."
"And that's what laws are for, really, aren't they?"
"You just have to know when to break those laws."
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Her rubber soles throw up small puffs of dust as she approaches. Alex is sheltered from the breeze by the upturned edge of the blanket, sleeping soundly. There's a moment of stillness, as she stops, and he knows she's there but doesn't turn. Not just yet.
She's not here to say anything. Just to let him know that she's alright, that she's there. He looks at her, nods his thanks, and she turns to walk back. He looks at the monolithic monument once more.
There are so many things that cannot be said, even if he had forever to do so in. And this talking into the air is stupid, but that's fine with him. He's done stupid things before.
"I have a son."
Then, just as he's turning to follow Rose's footprints home, he pauses. "I'm sorry I didn't come here sooner."
His footsteps are taken by the wind and thrown, along with the sound of the TARDIS, into the vast, empty plain, leaving it empty once more.
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We can never go back. Not to the way were once were. And so we move forward. Always forward, putting one foot in front of the other, into infinity.
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a/n: This is it. Part Five. The end. I had a whole heckuva time naming this part. Anyone interested can ask. And, oh yes. This whole fic was inspired by a challenge to write an AU in a place you'd never been before (though I've been to New York twice, years ago). All of the place descriptions were based off what info I could find on Wikipedia, Google Earth, and (oddly enough) a friend who happened to grow up in Bray and another who lives outside Perth. Funny how that works.
Thank you to anyone who reviewed, or even just read, this story. You guys are part of what makes fandom worth it. Thank you to my readers on LJ, and my BRs for not letting me drive them batty. Love to you all.
Disclaimer: Five parts later, and I still don't own doctor Who. That would be the BBC and such people.
The poem in the story is called Birches, by Robert Frost.
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